Paper Love
by Lady Altair
Summary: Gideon Prewett learns to let go.


This last holiday has been kind to me. Perhaps some muses followed me back from the Mediterranean. Hopefully my inspiration continues on for a while. :) It's the nicest thing I brought back from holiday; mad freckles and an insanely itchy sunburn hitched a ride too!

Also, this is another of mine in the vein of Marlene/Gideon: '_Mourning Bride and Mulberry', 'In Dreams, We Live', _and _'RedBlackBeautiful' _(in _'Merry and Bright_', ficlet 7). Probably won't make as much sense without having read them. (I'm kind of bad about this...I think it's my way of working towards chaptered fics.)

Anyway, if you're still interested, please continue on! And if you've got a bit of time and have anything to say, please review!

* * *

_Paper Love_

At fifteen, grinning and innocent in the girls' dormitory in Gryffindor Tower, Marlene McKinnon and her best friend in the world write letters to the boys they're going to marry. Elizabeth O'Neill wants to address hers to John Martin (she's absolutely convinced he's going to be the one beaming across the altar at her) but Marlene talks her out of it.

"Who knows?" she says sensibly. "You'd feel rather silly if you have to just toss the letter because you've marked it up with the name of some boy you were in love with at fifteen." (Marlene is painfully sensible when she's out of love, when mad emotion hasn't ripped reason from her head. She's only fifteen, and that's not yet come to her.)

So they write, glancing up at each other every once in a while with a giggle, quills scratching, and every once in a while one or the other balling up a parchment in frustration to toss away and begin anew.

And Marlene is no poet. There's no lyricism in the words, no rhythm. She has grace in other places, in the elegant sway of her walk, the careless shrug of her shoulder. But she writes what she means.

In the end, her letter looks something like this:

_Dear Husband,_

_My mum says at fifteen you don't know what love is. Maybe you can.__ (I don't trust my mum, she's pushing sixty and I wouldn't wager much money on her knowing what love is, either). I don't know. I'm fifteen and I've never had a reason to wonder._

_I do wonder if we've met yet. Maybe I passed you on the street in Diagon Alley. Maybe we just missed each other, I walked into Quality Quidditch Supplies just as you walked out. Maybe you're in my year, or my house, or maybe not. I wonder when we will, if we haven't._

_But, just so you know, I'm fifteen and I'm already thinking about you. I'm already quite sure I'll love you. So maybe I do know what love is. What it feels like is still a big mystery. I suppose I'll have to wait and see._

_I'm not sure if you're the first (you might be, there's been no one yet.) I do know you'll be the last._

_Just so you know._

_Love,_

_Marlene_

_(and p.s. Martin says he'll kill you if you hurt me, Azkaban be buggered. And he's an Auror, he knows how to make it unpleasant. Just so you know.)_

She takes it home over summer holiday, hides it away in a desk drawer in her room. And she forgets.

Time goes by and the innocent girl Marlene was dies, broken inside. And then the broken girl dies, too.

* * *

The Death Eaters tore the house asunder in their wave of destruction. The sky over Stirling is grey and low, casting wan light into the downstairs hallway where Marlene's parents fell. Marlene's still lying where Gideon found her, curled up as though asleep in his bed miles to the south in Devon, stiff and cooling.

The envelope, a soft pale lavender, stands out amidst the cream parchment of years-old essays and doodling sketches on the floor of Marlene's childhood room, turned out of desk drawers and wardrobes.

Her handwriting is soft and curling, the 'i's dotted with little stars. It's untouched by age, a fifteen-year-old Marlene's innocent, untarnished hope haloing the words written in sky blue ink.

Gideon steals it when he goes, keeps the paper folded up in a pocket near his heart. He knows it's not his, he has no right. But he has nothing else, and he cannot throw her heart away twice. He keeps her paper love close to his heart until the ink fades, the crisp parchment goes limp like fabric with wear and handling.

He holds on to it when he should let go, and it grows dirty with blood and dirt and falls to tatters.

The irony, the sad, desperate symbolism dawns on him one day in late December. Her sky blue ink is faded, the parchment dirtied and tattered and all of the beautiful innocence and hope in the words has faded into filth. He recalls Marlene's sad, bloodshot eyes, old, black makeup bleeding into the fine lines around them, the stale haze of smoke about her, the pale, dull cast of her skin, all of her young, bright, freckled beauty ruined and spackled over with chalk and rouge.

He leaves the tiny, illegible scraps of the letter on her grave with a bouquet of white and burgundy roses, beautiful against the snow thin on the ground.

Gideon lets her go.

He falls the next night while his roses still lay fresh on Marlene's grave.


End file.
